Please complete readings before the class date on which they are listed. Make sure to print or save online readings so that you can annotate them and bring them to class. Readings may change up until the week before they are due, so please check the schedule regularly.
Unit 1: Cultural Operating Systems in the Age of GamerGate and BlackLivesMatter
Week 1: 27 January. Systems.
To be read and discussed in class: Excerpts from Tara McPherson, “U.S. Operating Systems at Midcentury” and Lisa Nakamura, “Queer Woman of Color: The Highest Difficulty Setting There Is.”
Blog post 1 due: Any time this week before the end of the day on Friday January 29
Week 2: 3 February. Gender.
Laurie Penny, “Cybersexism”
In-class workshop: how do we live gender on and offline?
Blog post 2 due: Any time this week before the end of the day on Friday February 5
Week 3: 10 February. Race.
Ta-Nehisi Coates, excerpts from Between the World and Me
Wendy Hui Kyung Chun, excerpts from “Race and/as Technology, or, How to Do Things to Race” (Read ONLY sections marked with red arrow)
Alicia Garza, “A Herstory of the #BlackLivesMatter Movement”
In-class workshop: how do we live race on and offline?
Blog post 3 due: Any time this week before the end of the day on Friday February 12
Exploration 1: Digital Autoethnography. Due Monday February 15.
Unit 2: Social Media and Social Justice
Week 4: 17 February. Algorithms.
Eli Pariser, “Beware Online Filter Bubbles”
danah boyd, “Inequality: Can Social Media Resolve Social Divisions?”
Matt Honan, “I liked everything I saw on Facebook for two days. Here’s what it did to me.”
B.J. May, “How 26 Tweets Broke My Filter Bubble”
In-class workshop: mapping the contours of our social media lives
Blog post 4 due: Any time this week before the end of the day on Friday February 19
Week 5: 24 February. Subcultures.
Whitney Phillips, This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things, Introduction and chapters 2, 6 (“Race and the No-Spin Zone: The Thin Line Between Trolling and Corporate Punditry”), and 7 (“Dicks Everywhere: The Cultural Logics of Trolling”)
Whitney Phillips, We’re the reason we can’t have nice things on the internet
Student-led discussion. Group 1: Phillips chapter 6; Group 2: Phillips chapter 7.
Blog post 5 due: Any time this week before the end of the day on Friday February 26
Week 6: March 2. Hashtags
Nora Daly, “Can Hashtag Activism Have Real Impact?”
“Here’s What Happened to the Woman Who Started #CancelColbert” (video)
Susana Loza, “Hashtag Feminism, #SolidarityIsForWhiteWomen, and the Other #FemFuture”
Moya Z. Bailey, “#transform(ing)DH Writing and Research: An Autoethnography of Digital Humanities and Feminist Ethics”
Student-led discussion. Group 3: Loza; Group 4: Bailey
Blog post 6 due: Any time this week before the end of the day on Friday March 4
Week 7: March 9.
In-class workshop: developing Exploration 2
Exploration 2: Media Curation. Due Friday March 11.
SPRING BREAK
Unit 3: Digital Infrastructures of Labor, Knowledge, and Power
Week 8: March 23. Physical infrastructures
Aditya Chakrabortty, “The Woman Who Nearly Died Making Your iPad” (Includes discussion of suicide.)
Deconstructing FoxConn (short film about labor conditions at the Chinese factory where Apple and many other electronic products are made. (Includes discussion of suicide.)
Lisa Nakamura, “Indigenous Circuits and the Racialization of Early Electronics Manufacture”
Student-led discussion. Group 5: Nakamura
In-class workshop: Thinking through the ethics of production
Blog post 7 due: Any time this week before the end of the day on Friday March 25
Week 9: March 30. Social infrastructures
Lisa Nakamura, “Don’t Hate the Player, Hate the Game: The Racialization of Labor in World of Warcraft”
Adrian Chen, “The Laborers Who Keep Dick Pics and Beheadings Out of Your Facebook Feed”
Andrew Ross, “In Search of the Lost Paycheck”
Student-led discussion. Group 6: Ross or Nakamura (group’s choice)
In-class workshop: Fair digital labor practices?
Blog post 8 due: Any time this week before the end of the day on Friday April 1
Week 10: April 6. Infrastructures of images
Nick Mirzeoff, from How to See the World:
Introduction
World Cities, City Worlds;
Visual Activism
Nat Castaneda visiting class
Blog post 9 due: Any time this week before the end of the day on Friday April 8
Week 11: April 13. Intellectual infrastructures
Donna Haraway, excerpts from “Situated Knowledges”
Jose van Dijk, “Wikipedia and the Neutrality Principle”
Bryce Peake, “WP:THREATENING2MEN: Misogynist Infopolitics and the Hegemony of the Asshole Consensus on English Wikipedia”
In-class workshop: exploring the production of knowledge on Wikipedia. Sign up for a Wikipedia account before class!
Blog post 10 due: Any time this week before the end of the day on Friday April 13
Week 12: April 20.
No class: Visiting 209’s Capstone Mini-Fair.
Please arrive at PFR 0118 at 4pm.
Blog post 11 due: Any time this week before the end of the day on Friday April 22. Please use the usual questions to respond to what you saw at the Capstone Mini-Fair, and include your very preliminary thoughts about what to pursue for your own Capstone.
Week 13: April 27.
In-class workshop: sharing and responding to projects.
Post a draft of your exploration to the blog before class and arrive prepared to talk through it in front of the group and to offer feedback to your peers.
Exploration 3: Knowledge Archaeology. Due Friday April 29.
Final project development: pursuing ideas and developing research
Week 14: May 4. In-class workshop and party. Bring food!
Week 15. Final Project Due on blog by the end of the day May 15th.
Comment on two of your classmates’ posts by the end of the day May 17th.
Participation Questionnaire, DCC event blogs, and all make-up work due by the end of the day May 17th.